Identity Crisis td-97 Read online

  "I'm an innocent citizen," Remo grated. "Who are you?"

  The agent managed to get the mushy letters IRS past his chipped teeth and plastic side arm.

  "Since when does that give you cause to shoot at an innocent hospital employee?"

  The man's explanation refused to get past the Glock, so Remo removed it, keeping the barrel hovering menacingly. The agent understood Remo had no intention of shooting him. His finger wasn't even on the trigger. But having felt the impact on his teeth, he recognized the threat.

  "You can't do this to the IRS."

  "The IRS did it to me first. Now I want answers."

  The thin stream petered out as the agent got his answer organized. "This hospital has been seized by IRS order."

  "I saw the sign. Why? And don't tell me for deducting his 900-number calls. Harold Smith is as honest as the day is long."

  "The days are getting shorter. Smith failed to report over twelve million dollars of income. That makes him a money launderer. Maybe a drug dealer."

  "Drugs! Smith?"

  "This is a private hospital. A perfect cover for illicit drug dealing."

  "That why the DEA is standing outside, scratching themselves?"

  The IRS man nodded. "They landed just as we pulled in through the gate. There were two separate operations. We got the worst of it, fortunately."

  "What do you mean, fortunately?"

  "Well, we lost a man, but he was only a trainee. And another agent took one in the ankle. That gave us the moral high ground to claim jurisdiction."

  "That's gotta be worth a man and an ankle," Remo said dryly.

  "Without tax revenue, there is no America," the agent said in a wounded voice.

  "Tell it to Thomas Jefferson."

  "The founding father who said something about taxation without representation being tyranny."

  "Never heard of him."

  "Do tell. Where's Smith?"

  "They took him to intensive care."

  "Dead?"

  "We don't know what's wrong with him. He's stiff as a corpse. Paralyzed, but his eyes are open." The agent repressed a visible shudder.

  "Sounds scary," Remo remarked.

  "I wouldn't want that to happen to me."

  "Perish the thought," said Remo, reaching up to tap the man on the exact center of his forehead, where his third eye was supposed to be. The man went out like a human light. Remo grabbed him by his tie and eased him to the floor.

  Remo left him lying flat on his back, stiff as a board. But not before he stopped to peel back the agent's eyelids and remove the opaque glass dome from an overhead light so the harsh bulb glare struck him full in his unprotected eyes.

  Maybe the guy wouldn't go blind when he came to again, but he'd be wearing sunglasses for the next year.

  Remo went up the steps. He met Mrs. Mikulka, Smith's longtime private secretary, who was carrying down a cardboard box. She was fighting back tears.

  "What's going on?" Remo asked.

  She caught at her throat. "Oh, you startled me."

  "Sorry."

  "I've been fired."

  "Smith fired you?"

  "No. The IRS."

  "How can they fire you?"

  "They have taken over the hospital. I barely had time to get my things together." She showed him the cardboard box, whose top flaps hung open and forlorn.

  Remo looked into the box. "It's empty," he said.

  "They confiscated my personal effects."

  "Why?"

  "They called them assets. My poor son's graduation photo was all they let me keep. And only because I fought them for it."

  "Look," Remo said sympathetically, "I'm sure we can get this straightened out. You go home and wait for the all-clear."

  "Poor Dr. Smith is in intensive care. They burst in on him as if he were some sort of criminal. But he's not like that. Not at all. He's the dearest man. Why, when my son passed away-"

  "Smith up on the third floor?"

  "Yes."

  "Go home. Someone will call you when everything gets straightened out."

  On the third floor Remo eased the fire door open. The buzz of voices was a blur. He couldn't make out any one voice in particular. He was in the process of zeroing in on one voice when he became aware of a subtle warmth on the cool stairwell.

  Remo whirled.

  The Master of Sinanju stood regarding him with brittle eyes.

  "What happened?" Remo asked.

  "Idiots happened. Why are you not guarding the gold?"

  "I could ask the same of you," Remo said pointedly.

  "It was our agreement that I sleep with the gold and that you pass your idle waking hours guarding the gold. When I was awakened by rudeness and ignorance, you were not there."

  "I was paying my respects."

  Chiun made a disgusted face. "You have no respects. Not for yourself. Not for the one who exalted you above all others of your stumbling ilk." Chiun's hazel eyes narrowed suddenly. "Respects to whom?"

  "To myself. I went to the grave last night."

  "Only a white would mourn for himself."

  "I looked into the mirror of memory."

  Chiun cocked his birdlike head to one side. "And?"

  "I saw a woman's face. She had Freya's eyes." Remo lowered his voice to a whisper. "Chiun, I think it was my mother."

  "You did not see your father?"

  "No."

  "How could you summon up your mother and not your father?"

  "Because my mother appeared to me."

  "Like a spirit?"

  "Exactly."

  "What was this lying wench wearing?"

  "That's no way to speak about my mother, dammit."

  Chiun clapped long-nailed hands together. Dust filtered down from the ceiling in response. "Answer!"

  "I don't remember," Remo admitted.

  "You have the eyes of a hawk and you do not remember common clothes?"

  Remo thought about that a moment. "I don't think she was wearing any."

  "Your mother was naked?"

  "No. I can't explain it. I don't remember her being naked, but I know she wasn't wearing clothes."

  Chiun's hazel eyes narrowed thinly. "You did indeed see your mother, Remo."

  "She was trying to tell me how to find my father. She said if she could stand up where she lay, she could see mountains and a stream called Laughing Brook."

  "Your mother is dead, Remo."

  "I know," Remo said softly.

  "But your father is not."

  "She thought it was important for me to find him."

  "Then it is. But first we have work to do."

  "Without Smith, I don't have a prayer of finding anyone. What the hell's going on?"

  "I do not know. I awoke to rudeness and boom sticks booming, and then the barley drinkers were swarming over Folcroft."

  "Barley drinkers?"

  "The lesser English."

  "Lesser?"

  "The Irish terrorists. Those who break knees and mothers' hearts with their cruelty."

  "You mean the IRS?"

  "Exactly."

  "Little Father, the Irish terrorists are called the IRA. Irish Republican Army. The IRS is the Internal Revenue Service."

  Chiun squeaked, "Those who tax! The taxing ones?"

  "Exactly."

  "They must not find my gold. Quickly! We must go to guard it."

  "What about Smith?" asked Remo.

  "I have placed him in the sleep from which only I can awaken him. The fool attempted to end his life with poison."

  "Just because the IRS landed on him?"

  "No doubt he is guilty of skimming vast sums from his overseers. That can await. The gold must be moved."

  "We move that gold, and the IRS will be on us like white on rice-excuse the expression."

  "Then we must dispatch these IRS confiscators."

  "We can't do that," said Remo.

  "Why not? If we kill them all, they will leave us alone."

  "You
don't know the IRS. They'll keep sending out agents until they get what they want."

  "Then we will kill them all!" Chiun proclaimed.

  "They'll just keep swearing in more agents. It's a bottomless pit. Forget it, Little Father. We gotta solve this some other way."

  "What other way?"

  "I don't know, but we can't hang around this stairwell forever. Let's make tracks."

  "I would rather make IRS bodies."

  But the Master of Sinanju followed Remo down the stairs on cat feet.

  On the way down, they heard a steady beating like a drum.

  Doom doom doom doom...

  "What the hell is that?" Remo wondered aloud.

  "I do not know and I do not care," sniffed Chiun.

  "Sounds familiar."

  "We have more important matters before us than some lunatic beating an animal skin."

  Remo stopped abruptly in front of a fire door. "Sounds like it's on the other side."

  But when he flung open the door, there was only a deserted corridor. And the drumming had stopped.

  Shrugging, Remo started back down. They reached the basement undetected.

  Chiun flew to the triple-locked door and saw that it was secure.

  "We must guard this with our lives," he said grimly.

  "Look, can you hold the fort for an hour or so?" Remo asked, anxious voiced.

  Chiun looked up at him suspiciously.

  "Better than you, but what is so important that you would leave the one who raised you up from the muck of Christianity and other Western nonsense to defend the gold of his village alone?"

  "There was something else my mother said," Remo said.

  "What was it?"

  "She said I knew my father."

  "Then she is not your mother, for she lied to you."

  "Her exact words were, 'He is known to you, my son.' She called me 'son.' I gotta find out who she is, Chiun."

  And seeing the troubled light in his pupil's dark eyes, the Master of Sinanju said, "I give you one hour. But what do you expect to accomplish in so brief a time?"

  "I'm going to get her picture," said Remo in a strange voice.

  But before the Master of Sinanju could question his obviously demented pupil further, he slipped out the side door.

  Chiun took up a position before the triple-locked door, his face stern, his eyes troubled. Far more troubled than those of his pupil.

  For he knew what Remo Williams did not. That he had met his father, unknowing, and must not learn the truth of his parentage. Otherwise, the Master of Sinanju might never be forgiven for concealing this truth.

  Chapter 6

  Harold W Smith heard the federal magistrate's charges from his hospital bed.

  He was awake. They could tell that by his eyes. The attending physician had proved that he was awake even if he could not move his body by getting Smith to blink once for yes and twice for no.

  It had been half a day now. A half day since the combined raids by the IRS and the DEA had overwhelmed Folcroft's virtually nonexistent defenses. A half day since the Master of Sinanju had thwarted his attempt to ingest the suicide pill that was Smith's last resort in the event of catastrophic compromise. Once before, he had been forced to take that pill. Chiun had stopped him then, too. Didn't he understand? Once CURE was no more, Smith would have to die.

  Perhaps it was the memory of that last wrenching failure that had caused Smith's mouth to go dry as he took the pill into his mouth. Perhaps it was the suspicion that it was the new President's way of shutting down CURE and making certain it stayed shut down that had brought on the raids.

  Smith could only surmise these things. Whatever the case, the pill would not go down his dry throat, but had lodged there instead. Chiun had caused it to pop out with his irresistible manipulations, and with that thoughtless act went Smith's final chance to end it all.

  Now he lay paralyzed. Again the Master of Sinanju had been very clever. He understood that Smith would find a way-any way-to end his life if he had the strength and mobility to do so.

  But as the federal magistrate droned out the charges-the titles and sections and subsections of the Revenue Code-which had come crashing down on his head like a rain of hard brick, Smith began to realize the absurdity of it all.

  They thought he was some kind of drug merchant and money launderer. Where could they have gotten so ludicrous an idea?

  "These charges include the willful and deliberate failure to report some twelve million dollars in income that were surreptitiously wire transferred to the Folcroft Sanitarium bank account-an account that you, Dr. Smith, have sole control over. No currency-transaction report was generated, and there was no rendering to the IRS of estimated tax payments. How do you plead to these charges? Guilty or not guilty? Blink once for guilty, twice for not."

  Smith blinked twice.

  "Since you have waived the right to counsel, I hereby place you under house arrest. You are not to leave these premises under any circumstance."

  I am completely paralyzed, Smith thought bitterly. What is that man thinking of?

  "Pending a federal trial, I have agreed to the petition of the Internal Revenue Service that they take complete operating control of this hospital pending the outcome of said trial. You may of course file a petition with the tax court if you feel this seizure is baseless or excessive."

  Smith would have groaned if his throat would let him.

  They would search Folcroft for contraband, if they hadn't already done so. They would find the CURE computers. Even with their data banks erased, this would raise unanswerable questions. And there was the gold stored with the computers. It had belonged to Friend. Its recovery by the Master of Sinanju and Remo meant CURE had operating capital for the coming fiscal year. It would be impossible to explain away.

  As impossible as the twelve million dollars that now lay on deposit in the Folcroft bank account.

  The amount could not be a coincidence, Smith realized.

  During Friend's multipronged attempt to neutralize Folcroft so he could blackmail the US. banking system, the relentlessly greedy VLSI chip had infiltrated the computer links that governed the Federal Reserve wire-transfer system. Money began disappearing from bank computers all over the nation, including the CURE operating fund in the Grand Cayman Trust headquartered on Grand Cayman Island in the Caribbean.

  The money had disappeared. Smith had coerced Friend into returning all the rerouted funds before shutting him down for good. He had forgotten to specify the missing CURE money. It was a serious oversight, committed at the end of a very taxing operation.

  Now Smith understood where the missing funds had gone to. Friend had wire transferred them to the Folcroft account. It was a final scorpion sting from an old foe who had refused to die. Folcroft was already being audited by the IRS. Friend's doing once again, Smith now realized.

  No doubt Friend had also dropped a dime with the DEA.

  Thus, from the oblivion of his electronic grave, Friend had exacted his final revenge upon CURE and Harold W Smith.

  There was no way to explain away twelve million dollars in the operating account of a sleepy private hospital. No doubt the bank that handled the Folcroft business account itself was under great scrutiny.

  CURE was finished.

  Harold Smith lay on his hospital bed prison wishing for the strength to finish himself, too.

  But only the Master of Sinanju had the power to fulfill that particular wish.

  JACK KOLDSTAD was wondering exactly what kind of madhouse Folcroft Sanitarium really was.

  After six hours it was very clear that it functioned-at least outwardly-as a private hospital. Its patients were generally chronic convalescent cases, older and from moneyed families prepared to warehouse their sick until the inevitable end of natural life. None of that Dr. Kevorkian crap here.

  There was a psychiatric wing for the mentally ill. He hadn't checked into it yet. A subordinate had done that. Koldstad wasn't sure he wanted to deal wi
th those kinds of people. He had enough problems on his hands.

  First there was Dr. Smith's paralysis. None of the Folcroft physicians could explain it. The man was obviously alert and conscious. His eyes were open. But he couldn't even twitch. Koldstad wondered if it was psychosomatic, so he had slipped into Smith's room when no one was looking and jabbed Smith in the cheek with a needle.

  Smith hadn't flinched. He had batted his eyes and glared at Koldstad. But not a twitch otherwise.

  Just to make sure, Koldstad had inserted the needle in a couple of other tender places with the same disappointing result.

  He didn't try the technique on his own agent. They had found him on the first-floor stairwell on the floor, eyes staring, stiff as a board, but alive and thinking. Koldstad ordered him into an available room and gave instructions to keep a lid on it.

  No one could explain him, either.

  And no one could explain the drumming.

  Koldstad had first heard it while going through Dr. Smith's desk. He'd found a wide array of antacid pills, foams, aspirin and other common remedies-much of it marked Free or Sample-but no drugs or incriminating papers.

  The drumming had come from Smith's private washroom.

  It was a steady, almost monotonous drumbeat. Doom doom doom doom. It had continued while Koldstad fumbled for the washroom key, and it was still going when he'd jammed it into the lock.

  When the door was flung open, the drumming had stopped.

  There had been nothing in the washroom, either. Koldstad had checked everywhere, including the toilet tank, which was a common place to hide contraband.

  When he closed the door, the drumming had started all over again.

  Doom doom doom doom...

  It had stopped when he'd thrown the door open.

  Three times the phenomenon had repeated itself. Koldstad figured there was some mechanism involved. Close the door, the drumming starts. Open it, it stops. He had gone over every inch of the door and its jamb and found nothing even after he'd removed the door from its hinges. There had been no sign of wiring or strange devices. Not even a microchip. He knew you could buy greeting cards that played little musical notes when you opened the cards, activating a pressure-sensitive microchip.

  But there was no microchip to be found, and the sound was too loud for a tiny chip or even a big chip.